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SALES/ BUSINESS COMMUNICATION |
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To make it easy for
you to buy some(*) of these books, We provided links with each book to Amazon.com * = (that is, if the books were in the catalog ... ) |
Beyond Selling is the result of the joined effort of 2 experts: one in sales and sales training, and one in NLP. This shows when you read the results. You'll find typical NLP material in there, but it is presented in such a way that you wouldn't notice if you don't know about NLP. You'll also find a lot of practical hints and sales related stories, showing the modeling spirit of NLP. The book is built around a framework that can be summarized in 5 Mnemonics: GRIN (Gain Rapport, Identify Needs), ECHO (Establish Criteria, Harness objectives), CROP (Check rapport, Offer Plan), GO RA RA (Gather Objections, Respond Appropriately, Request Action) and FUEL (Follow Up Every Lead). Each of the elements is worked out in the book, and a lot of attention is paid to rapport, which is indeed an important element in wherever you apply NLP. I could fit the presented model on the elements I gathered from sales trainings discussions I had with salesman, and thus this book proved useful. As far as I know, it was the first NLP-book written to really to really target sales, and it's certainly not the worst one.
Several Translations are available. You can Complement this book with a small binder entitled "The Beyond selling Planner", written by the same authors and sold by Southern Institute Press.
"Creating a world to which people want to belong" is the definition for leadership that Robert dedicates to Gilles Pajou. However, during the trainer's training I attended at NLP University in August 1996, Robert used this same sentence as related to his personal mission. This shows how modeling in NLP works: you go out to model excellence and take over the parts that fit.
Apart from this, you get a combination from some material that came to Robert's attention between 1988 and 1991, when Robert did several modeling projects around Effective leadership Skills, in Europe as well as in the US, for companies such as Apple, IBM and Fiat. If you have read a lot of NLP material and attended a lot of formal NLP training, some of the material will be familiar, and the same is true if you have read a lot of management literature. Some well known titles from both area's can be found in the bibliography (a lot of titles that you'll also find in this booklist). But then, how many people have read a lot of books in these 2 domains? It proves that Robert did his homework before writing this book that is worth having around as a resource. Some of the chapters on their own are already a reason to read the book - unless you have read it elsewhere of course. But what Robert also adds is a framework. This book goes beyond the typical leadership books when it comes to giving a complete picture. Rather than emphasizing what is effective at a certain moment in time, Robert gives a systemic approach, starting from the principle of requisite variety: if something does not work try something else!
Topics include: The Parable of Porpoise (a chapter on giving useful feedback, based upon research in porpoise training), Leadership Styles (with the Leadership Assessment Sheet), Aligning Levels of Change in a System (this chapter is a must if you're involved in change or change management), The Walt Disney Model, Belief Systems (with the belief Assessment Sheet), ... As an extra, you'll find a reprint of "Overcoming Resistance to Persuasion with NLP" in the appendix. This is an article that Robert wrote in 1990 (together with Joseph Yeager), and that has been published in a separate booklet at the time.
If you want to behave like a leader, without reading a dozen books, this book will help you to get on the road to "creating a world to which people want to belong".In 1998, Robert wrote "Modeling with NLP" as a companion volume to this book. The second part of that book illustrates the application of NLP modeling to the study of effective leadership. Check it out!
<received but still in review> Sid became a very popular NLP trainer over the years. At the time I write this, he is asked so frequently in Asia, that he decided to move to Singapore. If you want to find out what he has to offer, and you are in business, this is the book to read. The goal of this book is to apply NLP techniques to problem solving. The first part gives tools to analyze the problem space. The second part provides a guide to developing a Solution State.
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As much as I like to read Joseph's books, as hard I found it to listen to these tapes. This tells you probably more about me than about Joseph, even if you have to get used to his typical English accent that reminded me of my first English courses when was 15 years old. Apart from this, tapes are great to listen to in a car, but this makes it difficult to take notes, one of the things I generally do when I'm learning something. Apart from that, I learned PhotoReading, and I can get more out of a book in less time. In short, this explains why I keep a booklist, rather than a tapelist...
Apart from this rather personal note, I must say that the content is OK. Starting from the point of view that leadership is to be seen everywhere, Joseph sets out to analyze what's behind this seductive mix of skills and talents. "Leaders seem to get things done", he says. "They draw people and make them follow them" (or something like that). For that they need communication skills, relationship skills and systemic skills. They must not only be able to manage themselves, they must also be able to see the broad picture, to set a vision and inspire others to follow them.
For achieving this, you need to explore your talents, learn from others and develop what's missing. Joseph explains how systemic NLP gives the answers to the questions you have. The first 3 sides of this tapeset deal each a topic: (1) skills to develop yourself, (2) skills to communicate with others and (3) skills to understand the relations between parts of the system your business operates in. The fourth side contains exercises for each of the three previous sides.
This book repackages all NLP material given at practitioner level so that it becomes useful for a business person, without the jargon and without focus on the therapeutic elements that came from the persons NLP modeled in the early days. When you take this entry point into the NLP field, you'll won't have to worry about ways to transfer your NLP knowledge into the work environment, which is a problem many people have had when they went through NLP training (including me and Sue Knight).
When your focus lies on the application of NLP in the job area, this is the book you'll want. No previous NLP knowledge required.
Brian Van der Horst was one of the people helping Genie Laborde to make this book happen (I believ as "editor", which isn't a surprise given that Brian wrote over 2000 articles). He was also the person making the appearance of this book happen on this list, since Brian gave me one of his spare copies. So I guess that Genie should thank Brian when they meet again...
As far as I know, this was the first NLP based book that was aimed directly at the business world. And given its timeles character, it still has kept its value today. Which is one of the reasons why it belongs among the NLP bestsellers. Apart from containing NLP "classics" like rapport, representation systems, observation skills, ... it contains a successor to the meta-model (called the "five finger Pointers"and based on Grinder's Precision model). All these stuff is brought in a way that is usable in a business contest (something that a lot of NLP trainers still can't do in 1998!). The book has also some specific business chapters on "sales", "negociation" and "meetings". I personally appreciate the extensive biography at the end of the book, that goes beyond citing the other books in "Patrick's Library".
As you can read on the cover, this book translates NLP-concepts in a language directed to persons who need to do some selling. If you have some NLP training and some sales experience, this book won't teach you many new things. If you don't have both, or you are looking how to apply NLP skills is a sales context, this book can give you some directions. Part 4 ("Sales management") some stuff that does not directly relate to sales itself, but it is useful if you are a salesperson, or if you want to be come one.
Also, as typical for O'Connor, this book is well structured. In the second part of the book, you'll find the key points of the book summed up at the end.
If you wonder how you'll ever learn how to apply all the tips described in the book, take a look at the end: there you can find some exercises to learn the NLP-skills described in the book
This book had the honor of being added to this list as the 100th NLP book (which indicates how hard it becomes to chose a book from this area). It has the advantage of being highly specialized (aimed at phone skills). I borrowed my copy to a trainer specialized in phone training. This person just had some basic NLP skills (from my course "7 lessons in Emotional Intelligence") and he could really appreciate the value of this book. Actually, I suspect he copied the book and now uses parts of it in his training sessions. The content of the book is about represenational skills (and how to use them in a natural way on the phone), levels of communication, discovering and questioning linguistic patterns (precision model of Grinder), ... When you know some NLP, this book makes it easier to apply these skills for phone work (an introductionary NLP course of about 3 days should do). I'm not sure how far this book will ge you if you know nothing about NLP.
This book offers a good framework, complete with examples, you can use if you want to give some sales-training, or learn about sales yourself. This books helps to apply the basic NLP models to sales, but it covers less NLP-models than the O'Connor book. If you already know a lot about the topic (and NLP), or if you modeled some top-salesmen, you won't find really new stuff. The best part, as in the previous book, can also be found at the end: there you can find a 21-day plan to put the described techniques together.
If you prefer to read in French, this is the book of your choice. It has a similar content to the two other books, and it has a better covering of the meta-model (O'Connor refers to his "introducing NLP" in stead). It also ends with some exercises that can be used as successive steps to integrate NLP in your sales-skills. Maybe ecology towards others can be a problem: some people will say the book goes over the thin line between "influencing" and "manipulating", but then, aren't these words nominalizations?.
Michael brought us 2 other "business related books", that somehow ended up sitting on the shelves of my library. However, these books didn't leave enough "imprint" on my map to be remembered in any particular way.
Don't be put off by the over-advertising on the cover and first pages of this book, it is not because it is that bad that they did have to put that many "recommendations" on it. I didn't really "meet" this book in the bestseller lists, but it is worth reading anyway. It uses "results" from Quantum Physics, Self-Organizing Systems, Chaos, Fractal Theory and Strange Attractors to explain the importance of principles we can find in good NLP books dealing with management and leadership. Given the way it is written, this book was probably forgotten by Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont when they wrote their book "Impostures Intellectuelles".
So why would you buy it? For instance, if you want to explain some NLP concepts to persons, without giving them an NLP-book, this book is a good choice. In NLP talk, you'll find arguments about developing and distribution of a shared vision, the presupposition that the Map is not the Territory, the fact that growth is necessary (we should prepare for eternal learning and continuous uncertainty) and the learnings of systems thinking.
(c) Patrick E. Merlevede, M.Sc & Acknowledge - This page Last modified on: 22 mrt 2001
